Your Posture Shifts Your Mind State
/What are you aligning to in this moment? You don’t even need to think about it- you can simply look at the way you’re sitting and how and where your breath is moving through your body.
From the puffed up fire breathing of anger to the sultry fluidity of ecstasy and every subtle emotional stop in between, every mind state you experience has an attendant posture and a matching breath.
If you want to change the way you feel, simply change the way you're breathing or the way you're holding your body to begin to break the spell. Posture, breath and mind are an invariably interrelated trifecta that dictates our experience.
The fast, slow, full or shallow nature of our breath shapes the body the same way the ocean shapes the shoreline, drawing us into a shape that matches an emotional tone. But not unlike the proverbial chicken and the egg, the breath also fills the shape that the body is in. So we can choose a posture that exemplifies an experience we’d like to have and let the breath and mind state fall in line.
This knowledge puts the power back in our hands. By cultivating a conscious relationship to the shape of our bodies and our breath, we are empowered to explore choosing our mindset and as a result, to shape our experience of life.
As I’ve awakened to the fact that I’m creating my own life experience versus being a victim of external circumstances, I’ve seen my harsh inner critic rear her judgmental head. She used to walk beside me at all times yelling “don’t slouch!” Over time I’ve discovered that the only way to successfully approach our precious, highly impressionable body-mind is with a gentle touch and a deep commitment to self-compassion.
Like James Joyce’s Mr. Duffy who “lived a short distance from his body”, many of us look at ourselves from the outside- in as if we are a panoptic surveillance camera waiting to catch a criminal. The antidote is to ask yourself a few questions that coax us back inside of our animal body where our power lives.
Sacred Embodiment inquiry Practice
Place your hands on your heart and belly in the ‘Mudra of Radical Self Acceptance’and ask:
Where is my breath filling my ribcage (belly, chest, front, back)?
What areas of my body feel tense right now? What areas feel free and good?
Could I try another shape and see what that feels like and how my breath or my mindset changes?
If we notice your breath is pushed into the upper quadrant of the lungs or that your shoulders lift when you breath we are inviting a state of worry, overthinking or anxiety. When you notice our breath is deep, low in the belly, slow and easy, the way a baby would breath, we are allowing optimal oxygen intake to our cells and reassuring the nervous system that there are no impending cheetahs on the horizon ready to chase us down.
When we find that our posture is curled inward, that we’re in the shape of a scared animal, that we are breathing quickly and the breath is moving our shoulders versus our belly we simply place our hands back on our body, ask ourselves one of these three questions and call ourselves back with kindness and compassion to a shape that embodies the qualities we’d like to experience: confidence, courage, relaxation, ease, trust in the process of our life.
Using the posture and/or the breath as a touchpoint throughout our day is a portal into the some even bigger, richer, juicier questions:
Is there a way I take better care of myself today to find a healthy balance of stimulation and relaxation so that my posture, breath and mind are balanced?
Is there a way I could be more aligned to my purpose or my truth in this moment?
Is there any way I could show up more fully for myself in this moment?
Practicing kindness and curiosity with our body-mind has the power to balance our posture, uplift our mind state and improve our breathing, all of which have immeasurable health benefits. This increased openness and inner listening awakens our intuition, our personal inner compass that guides us step by step along the path of our life’s unique purpose. While the practice of embodiment and self compassion require patience and practice, the mundanity of the body is the surest pathway to the infinite.
Practices for this week:
1) Childs pose (5-20 slow breaths): allow the breath to fill to spaces between each individual rib of your back and side waist
2) Reach your arms above your head and stretch (30- 60 seconds): Feel the muscles around your shoulders, chest, arms, back and belly spreading and expanding as you slow the breath into each of those areas in turn. After you release, notice how much taller you feel and how your posture immediately looks and feels more courageous.
3) Practice the Mudra of Radical Self Acceptance and ask yourself the three Sacred Embodiment questions above